Telesales appears simple enough, but it’s not easy. There are many barriers to using telemarketing for getting your business out there, ranging from voicemails to gatekeepers.
To help get you on the right path, here are some tips from the Blue Telecoms team on how to build an effective telesales campaign.
Targeting
When it comes to telemarketing creating viable targets is important; after all, you cannot hit a target that’s not been thought about and defined. You also need to consider the target audience that is most likely to be interested in your service.
- What product?
- Where?
- Who?
Data
Once you understand where you’re targetting, the next step is to obtain the accurate data you need. There are two ways to achieve this:
- Spend time creating your own list.
- Purchase a list from a good supplier.
Which path you choose depends on the industry and product you’re targeting. Whatever path you choose, freshness and accuracy of the data is the most important thing.
Work out what pains your customer
The easiest way to sell to a prospect, is to work out exactly how your product can solve a problem for them. Once you position yourself in those terms, the actual process of telesales becomes much easier. Most clients don’t care if your product has a particular feature; however, they’ll care if that feature can solve a problem.
Gatekeeper strategy
In the world of B2B, you’ll come across gatekeepers frequently. Even in residential work, you’ll come across a partner who states “my other half deals with that” as a gatekeeper style objection.
To counter this, you’ll need to work out a script and/or techniques to work around gatekeepers. Some telemarketers prefer to do some groundwork before calling, finding out the name or department they really need to be passed to. In residential work, callcentres might elect to dial at certain times of the day to catch bread-wining partners before they leave for work.
Create your decision maker intro
Once one the line with your chosen decision maker, there’s a short amount of time to catch their curiosity. Don’t waste it, be upbeat and concise. By focusing on alleviating pain, you’ll hopefully cut through to a particular issue your decision maker is dealing with.
Set your objectives
Figure out exactly what a good sales call means. Do you want to book a demo? Do you need to book an appointment? Do you need to take card payments? Whatever the goal is, define it early on so that your agents are constantly pushing towards it.
Make sure you’re compliant
Compliance is boring but essential. There are two sets of rules that apply to telemarketing in Europe. These are GDPR and PECR. Make sure you comply. This includes deciding the lawful basis for your call. For marketing, this could be ‘consent’ if you have a relationship e.g. where they have signed up on your website, or ‘legitimate interest’ where you need to carry out an assessment before you call.
However you handle this, if you don’t have consent or a contract, you will need to screen the data every 28 days against the CTPS/TPS opt-out registers. Remember, these apply to consumers AND businesses.
Don’t forget that you also need to screens any calls against suppressions or TPS i.e those individuals that have asked you to stop contacting them.
Follow up and don’t give up
Too many telemarketers fail to follow up or give up too soon. Too many fail to make enough calls to stack the odds in their favour. We don’t mean carrying on in the face of obvious rejection. Check out our techniques for handling objections. But, you need to recognise that telemarketing is a discipline. It is a process. Part of that is consistent calling over a period of time, all the while ensuring that you build rapport and ‘touch’ the customer using other methods if you can e.g. LinkedIn, email, mail etc.
Telemarketing is a straightforward marketing method that is simple to put into place. However, you can easily set yourself up for failure if you don’t follow these steps to success.